It's one thing to break open a $500 tablet to see what make it tick, quite another to rip apart an $85,000 luxury sedan. So let's be grateful to IHS for having the wherewithal to conduct a full-blown teardown of one of the automotive industry's most intriguing vehicles, Tesla's all-electric Model S.

The research firm this week published the initial results of the first phase of its Model S teardown, an analysis of the car's "two most electronics-intensive segments," its virtual instrument cluster in the main center stack and the premium media control unit accessed via a touch-screen panel.

IHS said its full physical dissection of the electric vehicle (EV) includes all of the subsystems found in the Model S "from the air-conditioning controls, to the safety systems, to the powertrain."

As for the teardown of the Model S head unit, IHS found that "in terms of design, components and manufacturing, these user-oriented subsystems have more in common with a tablet or smartphone than they do with a conventional automobile."

In fact, IHS calculated that the bill of materials (BOM) for the virtual instrument cluster and premium media control unit in the Model S was "roughly twice the cost of the highest-end infotainment unit" previously examined by the research firm.

"The cost structure of the electronics, the use of large displays in the cabin, the touch-screen-based controls, the mobile microchipseverything in this design makes the Tesla experience more like a media tablet or high-end smartphone than a traditional automobile," Andrew Rassweiler, senior director for materials and cost benchmarking at HIS, said in a statement.

"It's like looking at the components from the latest mobile device from an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy product. When it comes to the user-facing segment of the Model S's electronics, the company has radically departed from business-as-usual in the automotive market."

So what are the specs and parts in these state-of-the-art units? For starters, the media center features a "huge" 17-inch, 1,920-by-1,200 resolution display and touch screen, which IHS called "much larger than the average automotive infotainment interface." Powering the user-facing subsystems is Nvidia's quad-core, 3.14GHz Tegra processor with central processing and graphic capabilities "in the same league with recent smartphone and tablet designs," IHS said.

The design of the control cluster and media center in the Model S is the "most complex automotive head unit design ever seen by the IHS Teardown Analysis Service," the research firm concluded, pointing to the two systems' more than 5,000 discrete components, or "1,000 more than the highest-end infotainment unit previously analyzed."

"The mobile device-like approach to the Model S's user interface represents a very deliberate choice by Tesla," Rassweiler said. "The company really wanted to do things differently and employed virtual controlsrather than physical knobs and buttonsto take over the user experience. This approach required a major investment in big displays and touch panels, similar to the approach Apple took when designing the iPhone and iPad."

Here's a breakdown of the major components found by IHS in the Model S head unit, with their suppliers:

The research firm said it would be also releasing its findings from teardowns of the other Model S subsystems, but IHS may also already by eying the coming all-wheel-drive, dual-motor Model S which Tesla unveiled earlier this month. The updated version of Tesla's flagship EVthe top model is dubbed the P85Dfeatures a number of driver-assistance technologies as part of its "Auto Pilot" system.

These include forward-looking radar and 360-degree long-range, ultra-sonic radar. The forward-looking radar will scan cars in front of you and navigate tough terrain like fog and snow. The ultra-sonic radar, meanwhile, establishes a "protective cocoon" around the vehicle, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at an event introducing the new Model S.

The car also includes a camera with image recognition to read stop signs, recognize pedestrians, read traffic lights, and serve as a back-up system to the radar. Finally, the Auto Pilot technologies integrate with onboard navigation and GPS systems, while also tapping into real-time traffic updates via the cloud.

About the Author

Damon Poeter got his start in journalism working for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation in Bangkok, Thailand. He covered everything from local news to sports and entertainment before settling on technology in the mid-2000s. Prior to joining PCMag, Damon worked at CRN and the Gilroy Dispatch. He has also written for the San Francisco Ch... See Full Bio

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